georgestarcher.randomlings

Random ramblings from my personal side.

iDevices and Creativity

I keep up on the trends in media production.  What I find really amazing is how things like the iPhone4 and iPad are making seriously professional grade work possible for anyone.  Even the true professionals.  I cannot imagine what it would have cost to make the "Nancy Lee" video for Vintage Trouble five to ten years ago just due to the equipment.  This was shot on an iPhone4 for the raw footage.  Then one of the iPhones was stolen and recovered due to Find my iPhone.   You can read that story on their blog post.

I know people in the entertainment industry and in the industries around it.  A lot of them really do not see that this sort of technology is shifting things back into the hands of the independent creators.  A number of people ask me about iPad, iPhone etc.  I ask one question first.  "Do you have kids?"  And if the answer is yes, then my immediate answer is "Yes get one.  Especially, if they are the least bit creative."  I tell them it is a disservice to your kids not to introduce them to current technology like this.  It inspires their creativity and frankly it is how things are heading.   

What about the argument iPad is just for consumption?  My answer to that is two fold.  First, how can you possibly understand how to create if you do not see how people are consuming the final results?  You have to understand the medium to best use it to create.  Second, seriously can you look at the video for "Nancy Lee" and others like it shot with an iPhone and sites like HandHeldHollywood and see limitations rather than possibilities?  Just look at The Cube from Teradek to see how iPad is influencing normal production sets.  I have said from the moment I first got my iPad that it would change movie production with dailies and scripts.

PS I loved Vintage Trouble's sound so much I picked up the album , The Bomb Shelter Sessions, over on iTunes.  So yes making creative works like the video and putting it on YouTube can result in fan/customers.

Apple iDevices and Audio Recording - Pulling out what is left of my hair out.

Ever since I got my first iPhone, the 3GS, I have wanted to use it to record audio.  I have been in podcasting since it started.  Six years ago.  Not the five Apple tried to claim in iTunes.  Five is how long they have had it in iTunes.

I also had gotten an Owle Bubo (http://www.wantowle.com/) for Christmas last year.  It is a great camera grip and comes with the Veracorder mic to better aim your audio when making video.  The veracorder mic is below.  It's short and can be bent to angle toward your source.  It works on the iPhone3GS but has been broken on the iPhone4.  

Veracorder

Combined with the FiRE field recorder app (http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/) it makes a great hand recorder for questions, notes etc.  Especially since the FiRe app supports the Izotope (http://www.izotope.com/) audio processing plugins like Noise Gate, Hiss Reducer.  Sure you can only use one at a time but its cool for field use.  Even better is you can turn on pass through audio.  Where I am going is I wanted to be able to use my iPhone or now iPad as an inline noise gate for my sound board.  Why not?  I have it so why not use it?

To this end I needed a way to split audio in and out.  So I originally picked up a splitter cable from http://www.kvconnection.com/  This was made to work with the iPhone.  But it never would override the internal mic.  Now I find it works on the iPad.  I tried it again with the iPhone4 with little joy.

Kvcon-splitter

Next I go for the Griffin iMic.  The device itself works on the iPad and briefly FiRe recognized it fully and pass through audio worked. Then it quit.  Recording then playback can be heard through the output.  But the live pass through quit for a reason I cannot explain.  I have emailed the developer of FiRe.  I also find I cannot try it on iPhone 3GS or 4.  Because those reject the camera connector kit plug.  This is really irritating since I know that the iPhone4 changed the audio on the dock connector to be usb audio device.  So if Apple would just let the camera kit usb plug work I am betting the griffin imic will work fine.  All avoiding the inconsistent nightmare that is the headphone jack.  

Appleusbcam-griffinimic
In a nutshell which is appropriate since the changes and inconsistency are driving me nuts, get your act together Apple.  PLEASE!

Two Weeks with iPad

It was two weeks with iPad as of this past weekend. Here are some of my observations.

#1 - I am keeping way less content on my iPhone than I did before moving video etc to my iPad.

#2 - I have not purchased any iPhone only apps since getting iPad. But boy have I blown some green on iPad apps of various uses.

#3 - I have spent way too much catching up on Supernatural now that I have a small tv in my hands. Yup more $$ but worth it. It's a rocking great show.

#4 - I love reading my magazines and books on iPad. Though it can be a little tedious getting pdf downloads of various Forensic and Security magazines. They really need to embrace authenticated RSS feeds. Then I can automate the download and syncing onto my dropbox account where it's easy to open the PDF on my iPad.

#5 - Developers need to get certain apps updated for iPad. 2X bites for things like IM clients.

#6 - The camera connector kit works great for photos and audio. But the iPad is NOT a true 720HD player. I can copy from my Kodak Zi8 camera onto the iPad, but not play the video till I sync it back to my Mac with iPhoto.

#7 - iPad doubles my iPhone battery life. Because I am rarely carrying my iPhone around the house any more. Heck I realized I left the house without my iPhone the other day. Then I realized it was in my pocket. I had forgotten it was even there. I was taking iPad to the coffee shop for some reading and hot tea relaxation.

#8 - iPad battery lasts a really really long time. I only have to fully charge it about every other day. And that is with watching a couple of episodes of Supernatural each night before bed.

First 24 Hours with iPad 3G

It has been an interesting and fun 24 hours with my new iPad 3G. I want to touch on my experience so far. Setup:

The biggest task is getting setup. Not so much what to sync to the iPad. More of getting all the logins setup in the various applications. Email, Twitter, news reading to file syncing. First i needed to get the iPad onto my wireless network. I use a very nasty long wpa2 password. So i had to paste it into a text document and use my good reader app to sync it onto the iPad. Then it was trivial to copy paste it into the wireless settings. After that I could sync my 1password data over for all the other nasty passwords too tedious to type. It was just copy paste for each application going forward.


Power:

By now everyone knows that the iPad needs high power USB ports. So it is likely a lot of old power accessories won't work. I found my Hypermac nano battery for iPod and iPhone will not charge iPad. A pleasant surprise was that I found my Belkin travel surge adapter with two USB charging ports will work fine on iPad. That will make one less thing I have to change out when traveling. The last thing is my car power adapter for my iPhone will not charge the iPad. That is not the end of the world as I won't be using it in a car unless I am a passenger on long trips. Tip for 3G owners. Turn off the 3G radio when not using it if you want the battery life we have heard about on the wifi only models.

Audio:
My one gripe on audio. My nike earbuds will not stay plugged in. I had to use an adapter meant to use earbuds with a independent mic for iphone to get them to work. It seemed to be a short output only connector versus the longer with mic input band connector physical issue.

Books:

I have some technical books from www.pragprog.com. It was easy to download the pub format and drag it into iTunes. Then it just took a sync and my technical books were on my iPad. iBooks selection and pricing is not as good as Amazon kindle. So I have not bought anything through iBooks beyond public domain free books. The kindle reader app was not bad at all for nighttime reading under the covers last night. It has been years since I have read a good book on Drizzt the Drow elf. A PDF of Scott Sigler's Ancestor reads ok in Good Reader. Still not as nice as iBooks or Kindle for a reading experience.

That is all for now or I would be just repeating what many other folks have already put out there.

- Blogged from my iPad